There was a lot of hype around Prometheus before it was released in the Summer of 2012. Fans wondered what mysteries would be revealed in the film, who was the space jockey, where did the xenomprphs come from, and why was the company so obsessed with them? In the end though, those questions were only barely half answered, and even with those partial answers, most fans just wished that Ridley Scott hadn’t tried in the first place. But if you were one of those people disappointed in the non-answers of Prometheus, Scott says don’t worry, answers will be made available in the upcoming sequel, Alien: Paradise Lost.

While talking to IGN, Scott offered some hints about the big ideas behind the movie formally known as Prometheus 2.

“I’m trying to keep this for myself. I let the other one [Alien] get away from me – I shouldn’t have. I’m trying to re-resurrect the beast and let if off the hook for a while because I’m coming back into the back-end of Alien 1. I’m gradually getting to Alien 1. Prometheus 2 will start getting shot in February and I’ve already begun now so I know what the script is. Then there will be another one after that and then maybe we’ll back into Alien 1, as to why? Who would make such a dreadful thing?”

So basically the xenomorphs were created by… Someone? Unless I’m mistaken, that’s the first time I think that possibility has ever been raised, in canon anyway. I thought the assumption was that xenomorphs were a completely Darwinian species, naturally selecting their way up the galactic food chain. On top of that, the end of Prometheus made it look like they were created by accident from the alien terraforming goo left by the Engineers. So which once is it, were they found, created, or made in a bizarre accident?

Scott began all that creationist talk in regards to the xenomorphs last week while talking to Variety after receiving a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

“I tend to bounce from pillar to post, wondering what I’m going to paint next. But this was a call to duty, really, to reexamine and resurrect the Alien, if I could. Its role had been worn out in previous films, but one of the questions that had never been answered was why such a creature would be invented, and by whom. That opens much larger, more universal questions. I’ve met a lot of scientists who have whet my appetite for the technical possibilities of the future, but I’ve always wanted to get a group of them together and ask them if they’re religious. Because you’d be surprised how many dyed-in-the-wool astrophysicists there are who say that, yes, they believe in God. And I ask them how that relates to the profession of mathematics. Science will say we are random and biological. So if you go further than that, and say you believe in a higher power, are you saying you don’t adhere to the scientific plausibility of why, say, you and I can talk on this phone right now? Or is there a much larger connection that we can’t grasp yet? For me, that’s the biggest question we have left to explore, and that will be the underlying discussion of the next Prometheus film.”

That sounds like some of the heady philosophical discussion that Scott and screenwriter Damon Lindelof said that Prometheus would deal with, although it didn’t really in the end. What is somewhat heartening is Scott’s apparent dedication to bring the Alien universe back to the forefront of sci-fi franchises, now we just have to see if some of that Martian magic will rub off on Scott’s continuation of his first, big sci-fi hit.

Alien: Paradise Lost is scheduled to be in theaters everywhere in the Summer of 2017.

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